A post on The Verge follows up on recent comments by Valve's Gabe Newell about the possibility of Steam hardware by saying this is exactly what Valve is working on, and a reveal may come as early as next week at San Francisco's Game Developer's Conference (thanks Kotaku).

The article cites unnamed "sources" who say Valve is working with various hardware vendors on a "Steam Box," which sounds more exotic than "Windows PC," which is what this seems like, as word is: "Apparently meetings were held during CES to demo a hand-built version of the device to potential partners. We're told that the basic specs of the Steam Box include a Core i7 CPU, 8GB of RAM, and an NVIDIA GPU. The devices will be able to run any standard PC titles, and will also allow for rival gaming services (like EA's Origin) to be loaded up." They note a couple of possibilities that may make this more distinctive than a hardware specification, speculating it may include a proprietary controller, a biometric feedback device, and could take better advantage of Steam's "big picture mode."

This all still speculation at this point, as Valve has not responded to their request for comment.

CJ_Parker wrote on Mar 4, 2012, 01:18:Are you crazy? Where did that make any sense? Are people going to start playing PC games on the couch with keyboard and mouse? Yeah? Really?

I do it right now, you oaf.

If done right, the SteamBox will sell well and increase Valve's profits substantially. I'd be surprised if they didn't do this right.

You're one in a billion. There's a reason why so many companies have desperately tried to make some kind of mouse/keyboard combo for couches - what we have now does not work. The keyboard can be ok, but the mouse? I used to do some work on the couch, and it fucks your wrist up very, very quickly. You can buy a couch desk to rectify that, but who wants to bother?

Many on this board are convinced that console users want the luxury of having a mouse and keyboard you pick specifically, that they want to be able to tweak performance of both their games and their hardware, and that they want all that a PC offers.Many on this board are wrong. These things that matter to us aren't interesting to most gamers, which is why they're on consoles and not PCs.